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Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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Reinhold Niebuhr
Age: 78 †
Born: 1892
Born: June 21
Died: 1971
Died: June 1
Ethicist
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Theologian
University Teacher
Wright City
Missouri
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
Life
Rational
Bases
Deeply
Virtue
Impulses
Moral
Sole
Social
Rooted
Reason
Impulse
Men
Basis

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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they're going to do and guarantees them victory that's why they're fanatic.
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Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
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Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.
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The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.
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Certainly, anybody who says, in the eyes of God, is pretentious.
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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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I think that when we believe that something is right, there's a serious ambivalence about it. On one hand, you say, because it's right, it must be victorious. On the other hand, you say, it's right whether it's victorious or not. And this is what I believe about a free society.
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We have had to learn that history is neither a God nor a redeemer.
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We don't properly discriminate. We never discriminate properly when we're dealing with another group and one of the big problems about religion is that religious people don't know that they are probably as flagrant in these misjudgments as irreligious people.
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Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.
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Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.
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Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
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Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
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All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point it's a rather vapid form of religion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky.
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There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.
Reinhold Niebuhr